Developer Hiring Blog

A technical resume only scratches the surface of a developer’s career story. It might show you a few bullet points about previous jobs and programming competencies, but there are so many other details that you need to know before hiring a programmer.

Fortunately, lots of developers aren’t shy about sharing their work on GitHub. A lot of what you’ll find on a typical GitHub profile might not make sense to you if you’ve never written a line of code. But there are a few ways that tech recruiters can (and should) use GitHub to evaluate developers. Here are a few that you can try as soon as you’re done reading this post.

Reviewing developer applications isn’t as simple as matching a list of programming languages on a resume to your team’s tech stack. As a tech recruiter, you need to understand each candidate’s skill set on a deeper level and how they’ve applied their expertise to previous projects. But if you’ve never written a line of code, you might be wondering how to wrap your mind around a technical resume or open source project to this degree.

The good news? You can leave the actual coding tests to your hiring manager. The better news? There are a few parts on a developer’s Stack Overflow and GitHub profile that will give you additional insights when you’re reviewing applications. After you read this post, you’ll know how to go beyond the basics of developer profiles and evaluate applications more effectively.

For a long time, many recruiters used the phrase 10x developers (or “10xers”) to describe their ideal candidates. But what does that term mean? The textbook definition of it would tell you that a 10x programmer is ten times more productive than his or her colleagues. Sounds ideal, right? On the surface, yes. But for a growing number of software experts, it’s nothing more than a myth.

So how do developers feel about this hiring approach? We reached out to a few people to find out whether or not companies should be looking for 10x developers.

As a tech recruiter, a large part of your job is to find talented programmers. When you’re reviewing a developer job application, how can you tell if a candidate has the skill set that your company needs? Tech resumes, Stack Overflow profiles, and GitHub pages are the obvious places to start.

But because there’s so much information to digest, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the details. They’ll all be useful at some point -- but in the early stages of your tech recruiting, there are some things that don’t require as much attention. This post will walk you through some of the most common things you’re overthinking when you research developer candidates.

When it comes to hiring programmers, you can’t settle for “good enough.” But what’s the difference between a solid candidate and the right one? The answer to that question has a lot of layers—and that’s where developer candidate personas come in.

Candidate personas are hiring profiles of your ideal candidate based on real data and educated speculation. They help you understand the developers you want to hire on a professional and personal level, which makes it much easier to target your recruiting strategy to them.

When you sit down to craft your personas, you might find yourself staring blankly at a white screen with no clue how to begin. Before you spend time and money on research, ask these questions to yourself to help you develop them.

All successful developer hiring campaigns begin with the same thing: candidate research. There’s good reason for this. Identifying their skill sets, qualifications, motivations, and goals helps you target your recruiting message. It also gives you a clearer idea of exactly which types of developers to recruit.

Even though the impact of knowing your audience is obvious, you still might be thinking, “Where do I even begin?” But don’t worry—this post will show you where you can find the insights you need to understand your ideal developer candidates on a deeper level.

Programmers have a lot of strong opinions about which qualities recruiters should prioritize for when they’re hiring developers. According to this year’s Developer Hiring Landscape, they feel that recruiters should be prioritizing developers with strong communication skills, a track record of getting things done, and knowledge of algorithms and data structures.

But I was still curious to learn more, so I asked a few programmers and engineering managers to elaborate on the competencies identified in our survey. Whether you’re an experienced tech recruiter or are just getting started, I’ve compiled suggestions from a combination of full-time programmers and engineering managers that will help you identify the right candidates for your team.

As a tech recruiter, you don’t need to have extensive coding experience to do your job well. But to hit your hiring goals, you do need a basic understanding of the each role you’re hiring for—and more importantly, you can’t assume that all developers have the same skillsets, interests, and career goals. Whether you’re in the initial stages of the recruitment process or on the verge of extending an offer, here are a few questions you need to ask yourself before you hire a developer.

If you were to tell other technical recruiters that you’ve identified two strong developers for your open role, they’d be incredibly jealous. Many of them would probably say, “I can’t find enough relevant developer resumes and qualified applicants for my tech positions, let alone multiple people we want to hire.” While this is a good problem to have, selecting the right person in this scenario isn’t always a straightforward process. To help you get on the right track to choosing developers that are right for your company, here are a few things to consider when multiple candidates establish themselves as contenders.

I still have vivid memories of reviewing resumes from overqualified candidates. “This person looks great, but this job might bore them after a few months,” I’d think to myself. And in many cases, I’d simply take a pass out of an irrational fear that either the candidate would find the job boring or that we would ultimately find out that their salary requirements were too high. However, when it comes to developers that look overqualified for a job, it’s important to take a deep breath and think more critically about their candidacy. Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t rule out a developer just because they appear overqualified on paper.